Smith is about to start his first over. Rohit probably wants to have a look - which length Smith's gonna bowl. Rohit does his regular trigger movement. Backfoot finishes on leg stump and front foot points straight down the pitch. It's pitched up. Rohit punches it to mid-on.
So, Shaheen has got mid-on and mid-off up in the ring. And he is bowling from around the wicket. I was going through this recent piece by Danyal Rasool on Shaheen for Cricinfo and it does talk about Shaheen bowling from this angle once the swing dissipates.
Magical flipper to Cullinan from Warne.
So, before facing every ball Bavuma was making a conscious effort to place his head over his front shoulder with his open stance. The reason he was doing this - was to make sure his head didn’t fall over while batting.
Shoaib comes into bowl on 11th over. And he is quietly counting the number of steps he has to run in to finally scratch a mark of that point - from where he would pick up his run-in speed. Someone from mid-on interrupts. Shoaib gestures to stay quiet for a minute.
We'll start with 18.4. Rauf to Pandya. Pace-on ball, banged into the pitch. And there's this Monica Seles like grunt from Rauf - as if an auditory warning for the batter – hear how hard I'm coming at you. But can that grunt also be used as a distraction when it's not pace-on?
Nothing describes the situation after 18th over for AUS better than this pic. 34 runs needed from last 2 overs. From the mental set up perspective of that era it wasn’t thought to be that easy to achieve even in T20s. Even for the Aussies. Shaun Tait could barely watch it.
Yeah, it's that story once chronicled by Sachin himself that many of the cricket lovers may already know. Sachin had instructed Dravid that he would be watching closely which way Cairns' going to keep ball's shiny side and accordingly he would be holding his bat on that side.
First of all, some unorthodox field placements to begin with.
We start our story from the post-match press conference of another match from another world cup (and that doesn’t involve Pakistan)
Arjuna asked it. To which Mahanama said - there’s a carpet sale downstairs and all our guys were there. Arjuna reached there and saw all his mates were bargaining at the top of their voice. He got angry.
Langer and Steve Waugh both are keen explorers. When this whole Aussie juggernaut started with the solitary test win at Harare in the tour of Zimbabwe, Langer and Waugh made a visit to the local zoo. As they got closer to the regal beast, the lion drenched 'em with its urine.
Australia made a mountain batting first at high altitude. 434 of 'em.
On 24th September '23, In an ODI against Australia Ashwin bowled a very special ball to knock Marnus Labuschagne over. The ball took social media by storm. Many thought it was a carrom ball. The grip looked almost the same as Carrom ball. But it wasn’t. It was something else.
So, this is what Anderson's talking about here. Hiding the shine all the way through in his run up and giving way nothing to the batter to find out, until his front arm separates way from his bowling hand and that’s when the batter gets the first good vision of the ball.
The observation is about his short forward press. Take a look at this shot against Shoaib for an example.